


Wild Turkey and Percentages

by slightly_ajar



Series: Coping strategies [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: (Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), Angst, Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016) - Freeform, Angus MacGyver - Freeform, Episode: s02e02 Muscle Car + Paper Clip, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Jack Dalton - Freeform, Team as Family, What if?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 03:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14011068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: Jack tried to push past him again and the hurt burning through Mac shifted immediately to anger.  He pushed back.“Stop, she’s fine!”“How do you know that?“Because, I’m listening, Jack!”This is my take on what could have happened in episode 202, Muscle Car and Paperclips, when Mac and Jack argue outside the hacker’s warehouse.





	Wild Turkey and Percentages

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably mention that I’m in the UK and we’re currently about 5 episodes behind the ones being shown in the US so I might have missed out some plot or character developments in this story that have happened in the last couple of episodes. We'll catch up eventually.
> 
> This is unbeta-ed and I can’t help tinkering with the things that I write, changing a word here, rearranging a paragraph there... If you notice any spelling mistakes or words randomly appearing in places they have no business being please let me know and I’ll fix it. Thanks x

“I wouldn’t advise getting in my way right now.”

“You want to get to her?” Mac placed himself between Jack and the door, matching Jack’s scowl with one of his own, “you’re going to have to go through me.”

“Get out of my face.” Jack pushed past Mac, shoving him aside with his shoulder.

Jack’s expression wasn’t new to Mac. He’d seen it on Jack’s face each time he’d scowled at the bad guys pointing weapons at the two of them. He’d seen it when Jack had aimed his gun at the mercenary who stood over Mac, bloodied knife raised, as Mac was struggling to stand up on an injured leg. It had never been focused at Mac before. Having fury with an underlying threat directed at him through Jack’s glare was …unsettling. 

“You’re not the only one who cares about her.” Mac ran the few steps it took to put himself in front of Jack again, “I do too but she can handle herself. The only one who can’t see that is you. And if you don’t learn to see it right now you might just get her killed.”

“Don’t make me hurt you, Mac.” Jack shoved past him.

Mac moved quickly, growing angry himself. He stood in front of Jack with a hand pushing into his chest to hold him back. “Wait! Stop!”

Jack grabbed the arm holding him back, wrapping his fingers around Mac’s wrist. 

“Wait? For what? For those geeks to make Riley? For them to pull the trigger on the gun they have pointed at her?” He lowered his voice to a deep, hostile rumble. “Maybe the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree with you. Maybe you take after your daddy too much. Stay out here if that’s what you want. Walk away even.” Jack moved closer to Mac and tightened his grip on his wrist, his stance ruthless and predatory, “But when I care about someone I don’t abandon them. I’m there if they need me and I’ll do everything I can keep them safe.”

A sharp, shocked pain cut through Mac. He stepped back as though he was trying to escape a physical attack. 

Jack tried to push past him again and the hurt burning through Mac shifted immediately to anger. He pushed back.

“Stop, she’s fine!”

“How do you know that?

“Because, I’m listening, Jack!” Mac pointed to his ear and the earpiece he was still wearing, unlike Jack who had pulled his out just after he stormed away from the car. 

Things that had only happened moments ago but that felt to Mac like they belonged to a different day, in a different universe, in a time before Jack had blown everything to hell by using Mac’s oldest insecurities and deepest fears as a weapon.

Matty pulled Jack off the mission by yelling at him from another part of the city and Mac watched him stalk away, his shoulders stiff with tension and his eyes fixed resolutely forward.

The adrenaline from the argument still filled Mac, increasing his heart rate and making him hyper alert, as he walked back to the empty street where they had parked the car. He checked every shadow for an assailant, listening hard, his body ready to react to an attack. Underneath those sensations, somewhere deeper inside him, it felt like a badly healed wound had been torn leaving it raw and exposed, an old pain reawakened by a new one. 

Mac slammed the car door behind him after he settled in driver’s seat. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath in through his nose. He needed to focus. To push his emotions aside and compartmentalise them in tightly sealed boxes to be dealt with later. The mission wasn’t finished, Riley needed back up and they still had no idea what the hackers were planning. He ran his fingers though his hair, gripping it hard as he breathed deeply in and out twice more. Then he started the engine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Jack pulled Riley from the trunk of a car and after Mac kept a man’s heart beating with stationary and a combustion engine Jack sat in his La-Z-Boy and ate reheated lasagna. It had been a nightmare of day and he wasn’t sure if he had seen the worst of its fallout.

He had put his empty plate on the floor and picked up his TV remote when his phone rang, the display showing Mac’s name.

“Jack, I’ve been trying to work out the percentages,” Mac’s words were slurred and awkward. Jack could hear music and voices in the background, “I can’t make the numbers right. They’re not right.”

“Mac, you okay?” Mac sounded strange and the noises in the background weren’t the usual ambient sounds of Mac’s house. Jack’s Spidey sense tingled.

“The numbers. I can’t decide…I don’t know what’s right… the equations don’t work…I can’t make it not wrong.”

“Mac? You sound…” Drunk. And not happy and relaxed like he’d enjoyed a few drinks. He sounded liquored up, three sheets to the wind, please someone make the room stop spinning drunk. Jack couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Mac like that. They had put away a good part of a bottle of whiskey after Cairo but Mac was usually content with a just couple of beers at the end of a long day. 

“Where are you?”

“A bar. There are bottles on the mirrored wall over there. People are holding glasses…I have a glass too,” Mac sounded wary and confused. “And there are tables. And stools. For sitting. But they’ve been put around the room at random. There’s no pattern or structure, Jack. It’s not the most effective use of space. Should I fix it? I usually can fix things.”

“No, don’t worry about the tables, buddy, they are someone else’s problem.” Jack had tucked his phone against his shoulder to free his hands and pulled on his boots. “What’s the name of the bar?”

“I don’t know. I was walking and then there was a bar and then I came in….and now I’m here. I thought it would help but I don’t like it in here now.” The tone of Mac’s slurring voice was tightening with distress, “The carpet is sticky and the lights hurt and I’m trying to figure it out but I can’t and how can I fix it if I can’t figure it out?” 

Jack closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Something was very wrong. He needed to get to Mac now and derail whatever messed up train of thought was tearing around inside his head.

“Ask the bar tender. That’s the person who has been pouring you all those shots of whatever liquor you’ve pickled your big brain with.”

“Okay, Jack. He’s over there. I have to go to over there” Jack heard Mac grunt with the effort it took to push himself out of his chair.

Jack waited for a full minute, Mac must have been moving slowly, and then a male voice asked, “Hello?”

Jack asked for the bar’s name and address, writing the directions on the back of his hand. When he had everything he needed he asked the bar tender to hand the phone back to Mac. 

“Mac? I’m coming to pick you up. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” He pulled on his jacket and grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the fridge as he talked “sit back down and wait for me. Don’t go anywhere until I get there, understand?”

“Sit and wait,” Mac repeated. He sounded unhappy now, dejected and a little lost. “You’re coming here?”

“I’ll be there before you know it.”

Jack didn’t break any important traffic laws driving to get Mac. He considered some of the laws as guidelines and would argue, if asked, that he had a family emergency to see to which was far more important.

The bar was a little run down but clean enough. Jack smelled stale beer and neglect as he walked onto the tacky, red carpet. A few couples were sitting at the tables and two men sat separately at the bar, alone and brooding into their drinks. The lights were dim and a jukebox was playing a blues song that Jack didn’t recognise. He’d been in places like it before, and never to celebrate or be with people he loved. This kind of place was for drowning sorrows and hiding from hurts. 

Mac was sat at a table in the corner hunched over and writing feverishly on a white paper napkin. The table was littered with them and it looked like Mac had scribbled sums, equations and percentage signs on each one.

“Mac.” He was engrossed in what he was doing he didn’t look up when Jack called. Jack dropped down into the seat next to him, “Hey, Mac. You picked a hell of a spot for a nightcap.” A neon sign for tequila flickered on the wall above Mac and the lime green cast of light looked terrible on his skin. He looked sallow and drained with dark marks under his eyes.

Mac looked up at him and Jack watched as a range of emotions flickered across his face. First surprise, then confusion, doubt, panic, finally settling on what Jack decided was resignation. 

“Jack, you’re here?”

“I said I was coming didn’t I?”

Mac peered at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re here.” He glanced around the room, looking at it as if it was the first time he had ever seen it, “I’m here?”

“You are, but not for long because we’re leaving. Up you get.” Jack pulled Mac onto his feet and wrapped an arm around his shoulder to steady him when Mac swayed from side to side.

“Wait, I need these,” Mac carefully gathered up all of the napkins from the table, holding them in a clenched fist that he pressed to his chest. “I need to finish it.” 

“You can finish it at my apartment.” Jack started walking towards the exit, drawing Mac along with him, “Maybe I can help.”

Mac turned to him then, looking young and innocent. Like he’d never seen war or inhumanity, never ran towards a scream or been responsible for the lives of the people around him. 

“Maybe.”

Jack was used to Mac moving with self-assurance and purpose towards whatever he was planning to achieve. He felt fragile next to Jack as they walked to the car, like he was hunched against a strong wind or was curling into himself to protect an injury. Jack put him into the passenger seat and climbed in the car beside him. 

“Here,” Jack handed Mac one of the bottles of water he had taken from his fridge, “drink this, you will feel better.” 

Mac opened it, took a sip, and then started picking at the label. Jack checked the street and pulled out into the traffic.

“So, Mac,” The traffic was steady and calm so Jack diverted the majority of his attention to his partner, “I was wondering if you could tell me why you decided to indulge in a little unsocial drinking in the fine establishment we’ve just left. Not that it isn’t a lovely place and all, but I was curious as to what led you there? I’m guessing it wasn’t to find a pilot willing to take you to Alderaan.”

Mac didn’t take his eyes off the label he was carefully attempting to remove in one piece. 

“I was thinking. Then I was walking. Moving helps me think sometimes, helps me process,” His words weren’t slurring as much as when he’d first called Jack. Now he sounded tired when he spoke, weary. “I saw it from across the street and decided to go in.”

“You were processing? Anything in particular?” 

“A lot was happening inside my brain, too much.” He waved a hand backwards and forwards in front of his forehead then rested the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I have boxes, in my head, not real ones cause that would be impossible, the human brain fills the skull, but…there are boxes that I put things in, to move them aside…to compartmentalise them. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” Jack smiled, they stopped at a red light and he turned to tap Mac lightly on the leg, “and I am impressed by your ability to say compartmentalise with a skin full of liquor, by the way.” 

Mac huffed a little laugh. Then slumped deeper into his seat, still working carefully on the label of his bottle with clumsy fingers. “After everything today, all the…when I left the Phoenix building some of the things wouldn’t fit in their boxes in my head. The things were multi-dimensional and irregularly shaped so they wouldn’t go in properly then the lids wouldn’t close…the things kept spilling out…spilling everywhere, over and over, and they were sharp and jagged and walking wasn’t helping and…and then I saw the bar and I thought...” Mac paused. “I thought maybe I could make everything in my head slower, anesthetise it all.” He made a gesture with his hands, palms down, as if he was pushing something, squashing it down.

“Did it work?” Mac’s brain worked at a million miles a minute, it was what made him _Mac_. For his mind to stumble was practically unheard of and never good. Experience had taught Jack that it was best to just let Mac talk matters through in his own time without pressuring him so he kept his eyes on the road to take his focus away from Mac and give him some space. He checked the rear view mirror for anyone tailing them, watched the cars manoeuvring in front of him, saw red traffic lights turn to green. 

“No. It made it worse,” Mac rubbed at his eyes with the back of the clenched fist that still held the napkins, “I can’t think straight.” 

He had lost the greenish tinge the light in the bar had given his skin and now the street lights made him look pale and drawn. Jack could see the shadow of his cheek bones and mentally filed away the need to make sure he ate more.

“So you called me.” 

“I can’t remember deciding to do that. I wasn’t speaking to you and then had my phone in my hand and we were talking.”

“Well clearly a little bit of your brain hasn’t been fried by drink. I’m glad you rang me, even if you didn’t know you were doing it.”

They drove on in silence. They were near Jack’s neighbourhood and he could navigate without having to think about what direction he was going so he watched Mac out of the corner of his eye. Mac was staring down at his hands, out of the window at the dark streets, looking anywhere but at Jack, but his gaze looked like it was focused inwards. Even though he was drunk and exhausted, unable to think or even walk straight, his brain was still relentlessly working on whatever had escaped those compartments of his.

Jack turned into his street thinking hard. Drinking had lowered Mac’s defences and he was talking freely. Jack had a better chance at getting to the heart of what was troubling his partner than he did when he was sober. But he was uncomfortable with the idea of manipulating his friend like that while he was vulnerable. It felt a little like taking advantage of a bad situation. Mac might be furious when he sobered up and realised what had happened.

Jack turned into his apartment block, parked the car and turned off the engine. 

“Right, home sweet home, let’s get you inside.”

“We’re not at my house.” Mac gestured to the apartment building with a confused on his face. He leaned against the car door with his head resting on the window. “This is your house.”

“We covered this when I said that you could finish your big, fancy equation at my place, remember?” Jack climbed out of the car, walked around to Mac’s side then opened the passenger door. “Think about it, you’ll wake up Bozer if you go home now and he hates missing out on his beauty sleep. Plus, you know what how he is, he’ll fuss like a broody chicken if he sees you like this and I don’t think you want that.”

Mac looked despondently the staircase to Jack’s apartment. He closed his eyes for a moment gathering his faltering will, or maybe giving in to the inevitable, Jack wasn’t sure, he wasn’t used to seeing that expression on Mac’s face. 

Helping Mac to climb out of the car and start walking was slow and laborious. He was uncoordinated, leaning heavily on Jack for support with his head hanging down, clutching the papers from the bar in his hand as Jack helped him to the stairs to his apartment. He watched where he placed each step carefully like the alcohol in his blood stream had short circuited his understanding of where he was in relation to the world around him. 

“…so then she turned around and, let me tell you, it wasn’t a bottle of schnapps she had in each hand…” Jack delivered a monologue of his drunken exploits as they walked in an attempt to chivvy Mac along. Stories that would usually have made Mac laugh. Jack had expected Mac to correct the one about that time in Pittsburgh because it was probably physically impossible to have that many llamas in a minivan. Mac should have rolled his eyes at Jack, they should have bickered. Jack would have welcomed that. Mac stayed silent. Closing his eyes when they reached Jack’s apartment and leaning against the wall while Jack fumbled for his keys. 

When they were inside Mac dropped onto Jack’s sofa and spread out his calculations on the table in front of him rearranging their positions on the wooden surface around and peering at them in earnest.

Jack pointed to the napkins, “So you haven’t given up on that yet. What are those?” He sat on the chair to the side of Mac. “Are you trying to finally crack cold fusion?”

Mac blinked up at him. He tightened his grip on the paper in his hand and winced, a tiny flinch but Jack saw it. 

“I was trying to…I wanted to work out…You said…” Mac turned away from Jack. And there was that look again. The ungraded, youthful expression that Jack had seen in the bar. In it he could see Mac as a child who was just begun to understand that even though you try really hard sometimes things just don’t work out right.

“When I didn’t want you to go in for Riley you said that I might be like my dad…that I wasn’t…” He put the paper in his hand down, Jack could see a formula and sequence of long division on it. “And you’re right, I am like him, my DNA comes from both of my parents and I have a mixture of their genetics and their personality traits. I’m trying to work out how much of him…how much I am like him and…in what ways.” He shifted like was uncomfortable in his own skin. A futile attempt to escape from the pain of something that was buried inside him. 

Jack had been worried about whether he should try to make Mac talk when alcohol had weakened the walls he usually had around him, whether it was unprincipled and if Mac would, quite rightly, be angry with him. But now he didn’t care about ethics. Mac looked so thoroughly distraught that Jack had to do something. 

He had been so relieved that Riley was safe and that the mission had been successful he hadn’t considered what had happened between him and Mac outside the warehouse. Jack hated feeling helpless and when Riley had been in danger and Jack couldn’t _get to_ her he had felt helpless. It made him vicious. He was furious with Mac for being in his way and he’d lashed out with frustration and fear, saying things he never should have said, things he didn’t even mean, that were untrue. Jack’s stomach clenched and an icy feeling of dismay and guilt covered him. 

“Aw now, Mac, listen…”

Mac rambled on, not acknowledging that Jack had spoken “I’m like them both but I’m not like them at the same time.” He frowned as he focused at the problem he had set himself, “My mom had blonde hair. She was a chemistry teacher and loved science so I have those traits in common with her, but she was allergic to horses and I’m not and was a good cook and can barely make toast.” Mac hands twitched and his was breathing a little fast. My dad was, is, the same blood group as me. He liked to build things, but he…he…” Mac paused, reaching out to rearrange the papers in front of him as he struggled to find the words for his father’s failings, ones he worried he had inherited. 

Jack knew what words he would use to describe Mac’s dad. Coward. Callous. Selfish. A fool. He didn’t believe that disappearing and leaving Mac behind when he was a child had been the right thing for his father to do, no matter what the circumstances had been. He’d never told Mac that but he couldn’t see how James MacGyver abandoning his son was anything but cruel. He’d help Mac find his dad of course, he’d promised he would, and then he was intending to have a full and frank conversation with him when they did. He pushed the napkins to the side and sat on the table in front of Mac, not actually touching him but within arm’s reach. 

“So those are you trying to work out how much of what bits of your parents you have in you? How much of the good parts and how much of the bad parts?”

“I thought,” Mac gestured to the discarded paper sliding onto the floor, “if I could work what percentage of each of them was in me, which of their different traits I have, I would know if I was like that too, someone who won’t, who doesn’t…” He reached out, gestured like he was pushing something away, “someone who... goes.” 

He looked up at Jack, his face troubled. “I know my mom didn’t want to leave but she… and my dad, he…he…and if I have the trait that made him go…if I know it’s in me I can make sure I don’t follow that instinct and I won’t…nobody will….” Mac’s words trailed off but Jack could see the fear he’d been struggling to express echoing behind his red rimmed eyes. He looked devastated.

Jack needed to fix this. His own frightened, cruel, stupid _stupid_ words had done this and now he needed to fix this. Guilt and self-recrimination would come later and Jack would have to find a way to deal with them. A long run, an intense workout with a punching bag and a visit at his father’s graveside would be good places to start. He’d apologise to Mac too, but when he was sober enough to hear it and not tied up in knots of self-doubt and old hurts.

“We’re going to burn that pile of numbers. You don’t need them.” Jack put his hand lightly on Mac’s knee, wanting his friend to feel the comfort of a reassuring touch without causing the reflexive retreat that would happen if Mac thought he was being coddled or patronised.” I was scared, man. I was crazy, frightened, screaming into the void, angry and scared and I attacked the closest person too me. What I said to you was cruel and wrong and I don’t know how to even start apologising to you.” 

Mac met Jack’s gaze. “I would have gone in to help Riley if I thought she was really in danger. I wouldn’t ever let anything bad happen to her.”

“I know that, man, I never doubted that.” Jack slid closer to Mac and cupped his face in his hands, with his fingers on Mac’s jaw and cheekbones, and gently held him steady so they were eye to eye. “Mac, I need you to listen to me. You are made up of bits of your mom and dad, the two of them mixed up a bunch of blond, weird, terrible at cooking, science-y genes and created you. But you didn’t inherit their bad choices. You are what you choose and you always choose to do what’s right. I’ve seen you refuse emergency evacuation so you can disarm a bomb with one minute on the timer to protect a group of complete strangers, so don’t tell me that you have some genetic flaw in you that makes you betray the people you love.”

Mac’s eyes filled with tears. “But he…”

“There is nothing wrong with you.”

“I can’t…”

“There is nothing wrong with you, Angus MacGyver. Anyone who tells you different is a moron. And that includes me.” 

A shuddering breath left Mac. Hunching forward he put his head down and gripped one of Jack’s hands with his own. 

“There is nothing in you that you need to fix. Not with percentages, or alcohol or imaginary brain compartmentalising boxes.” Jack leant forward so that his forehead was just touching Mac’s hair. He spoke softly, wanting to create a moment of physical and emotional closeness. A moment of warmth and acceptance. “The people that love you, and I have a good sized list of those people by the way, don’t want you to be any different to how you have always been. If you were anything other than weird and skinny with a head full of boring nerd facts I wouldn’t know what to do with you. Capisce?” 

Mac let out another rough breath and Jack saw the tense muscles in his shoulders ease as he relaxed. 

“Good boy.” Jack gave him a moment to be still. Breath. Let his words settle into him where he hoped they’d become imbedded, braced like amour around Mac’s heart. 

He moved his hands from Mac’s face, ruffing his hair teasingly then resting his palms on his own knees. It felt like time to lighten the mood. Mac needed to rehydrate and get some sleep. He needed to step out of the frightened state he’d become caught in. “I think maybe you could do with some coffee. An aspirin maybe?”

Mac sat up very slowly. Then he groaned. The colour leached from his face giving him a sickly pallor. “I think I’m going to throw up.” 

“You know where the bathroom is, brother.”

He pushed himself up out of the sofa with great care then wobbled quickly and unsteadily out of the room. From what Jack heard he made the bathroom just in time. 

Jack was getting more bottles of water when Mac reappeared and leaned blearily against the kitchen wall, noticeably pale and scowling with what looked to be the start of an impressive headache.

“You look like hell.”

“Thanks, that really helps.”

“Anytime, the truth will set you free and all that.” Jack considered throwing Mac a bottle, looked at his shaking hands and unfocused eyes, then handed one to him instead. “What were you drinking anyway?”

Mac grimaced sheepishly, “I remember asking for Wild Turkey.”

Jack barked with laughter, “What now?”

“Wild Turkey. I liked the name. I thought it sounded…funny.”

“Wild turkey? Seriously, bro? Out of all the alcoholic beverages in that bar that you could have chosen your super genius brain picked Wild Turkey?” Jack laughed helplessly, leaning on the kitchen counter to support himself. 

Mac shrugged, murmuring, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Wait!” Jack drew himself up, standing to attention “Wait! Doesn’t someone drink that in a movie? It sounds familiar. I’m sure it’s from a movie.” Jack clicked his fingers as he quickly search through his memories of movie trivia. “Isn’t that the name of the liquor the girls in Thelma and Louise drink?”

Mac took a careful sip of water, regret and resignation uniting on his grey tinged face. “I think it could be.”

“Oh it is! I’m sure it is!” Jack pointed at Mac, enjoying his embarrassed expression and the normality of the bantering they had slipped effortlessly into. “Drive, Thelma, drive!’”

“Shut up.”

“I swear Mac, don’t ever change, I wouldn’t laugh half as much as I do now.”

Mac rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sick you know, a little bit of sympathy shouldn’t be out of the question.”

“That is true,” Jack held up his hands in supplication, “that is true. But I've always believed that done properly, getting liquored up and barfing in your friends bathroom doesn't have to be a totally unpleasant experience.”

Mac rolled his eyes. “Do you hold any memories in your head that aren’t movie quotes or a song lyrics?” 

Scratching his chin, Jack hummed in thought. “None worth mentioning.”

Mac caught Jack’s eye and held it; Jack’s laughter tailed off and he asked, his voice soft, “Are we okay, man?”

“Of course. Always.”

“Good.” Jack smiled. Then he nodded towards his spare room. “You should get some sleep. When you wake up tomorrow you’re going to feel like you fell into the Grand Canyon.”

“That’s hilarious, Jack.” With a visible effort and a grunt Mac pushed away from the wall he had rested his weight on and started walking. “You’re a funny, funny guy.”

“I do frequently crack myself up.”

“It’s nice that you crack someone up.” 

“Your face is cracked up.”

“Your brain is cracked up.” Mac was moving slowly, he managed to look nauseous from behind which Jack hadn’t known was possible until just then.

“Don’t puke on my carpet!”

Mac flicked an obscene gesture at Jack as he went through the doorway of the second bedroom. Then Jack heard the groan he made when his body hit the spare bed’s mattress. 

He gathered up his dishes from earlier and put them in the sink then took a packet of painkillers from the drawer and headed towards Mac’s room.

“I thought you might…” 

Face down, fully clothed, Mac slept. He must have flopped onto the bed and fallen straight to sleep where he landed. Jack covered him with a blanket and put the aspirin next to the bottle of water Mac had placed on a cabinet for him to find in the morning. 

His face was relaxed as he slept, his forehead smooth now that the furrows thinking too hard about nothing good had lined it with were gone. He had blue ink on two fingers and the heel of one hand. Ink from the calculations he had been writing to try and conclude whether or not was he was a good person, if he was caring enough to trust. He had beaten his brain bloody trying to work out what kind of man he really was then had forgiven, without question or blame, the person whose unkindness had caused the doubt in the first place. The irony of someone that smart being that dumb was mind blowing. Jack shook his head at the sleeping figure in front of him and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. 

Back in the living room, Jack eased himself back into the La-Z-Boy. He needed to think and think hard. He needed to think of a way to make amends with Mac for this whole disaster of a day. To find way to cope with Riley being a grown woman now, one that didn’t need him to constantly compensate for her useless father. He needed to not have another day like this one.

His own father would have told him: “Learn, son, and do better next time.” 

Jack would try.

**Author's Note:**

> This story took quite a lot of time to write. I knew what I wanted to happen but making it happen was difficult. It turns out that it’s tricky to write drunk people and made them sound drunk. Drunk!Mac has given me problems. I’m going to have make sure that he stays away from the booze in the future :)
> 
> I have never tried Wild Turkey so I don't know how helpful it is at helping you work out complicated maths problems, I'm guessing not much. I remembered the name of the drink from the film Thelma and Louise and, like Mac, I liked the sound of it. I decided to use it as Mac’s drink of choice because I thought Jack would enjoy shouting “Drive, Thelma, drive!” 
> 
> The line Jack misquotes is spoken by Brad Pitt’s character, JD: “Well, now, I've always believed that, done properly, armed robbery doesn't have to be a totally unpleasant experience.”


End file.
